"No man," says Mr Leslie, "was or could be a higher assertor of passive obedience than Dr

at least; and they whispered to the people that it was not for nothing that they were thus armed. They assured them, that whatever injury they did to their protestant neighbours would be forgiven them, only they advised them not to shed blood; sometimes they went along to see it effectually done, and sometimes they imposed it as a penance on such as came to them for absolution, to rob some of their protestant neighbours. This (says the honest doctor,) may seem improbable, but we have had creditable informations of it, and it will not seem so unlikely, if we consider that the priests reckoned the taking and keeping them no sin; and lastly, that some of the greatest of those robberies were committed in lent, when they do their penances; and therefore they could not be tempted at that time to steal and kill in order to eat, for in some places they killed whole flocks, and left them dead on the place. These robberies began in November 1688; and by the end of March next after, they hardly left one protestant in Ireland a cow or a sheep. Ireland has always been famous for its pastures, and the riches of it have always consisted in cattle, of which many gentlemen had vast stocks; for a man to have six, eight, or ten thousand sheep was very common. All these were gone in three months, to the value of at least a million of money; which, if rightly managed, would, with the cows and bullocks, of which there were likewise great herds, have furnished an army of one hundred thousand men with flesh enough for three years. Those who took them from the protestants, destroyed them without consideration: they killed them by fifties, and threw them into bog pits; they took off their skins, and left their carcasses to rot, and made all the havoc of them imaginable."

So goes the worthy bishop from the beginning to the end of one shocking mass of horrible impossibilities; and to crown this work, he gravely states, that the chief justice of the king's bench, and all the judges of that day, not only suffered the committers of such incredible outrages to go unpunished, but did actually declare that such robberies, as this bishop describes, were "necessary evils." The most savage nations cannot produce such

King had been all his lifetime. Even at the beginning of the revolution, he told a person of ho

an administration of justice as Ireland must have suffered under in 1689, if a tenth of the report of Archbishop: King be well founded. The archbishop passes from the persecution of the cows and sheep and pigs of the Irish protestants by James and his judges, to their equally relentless persecution of their religion and its pastors. A good deal of the virulence and malignity which the following lines exhibit, may be traced to that unfor tunate esprit de corps which too often distinguishes ecclesiastics of all persuasions; but the representation here given is so con trary to truth, that it required all the bishop's impudence to ob trude it on his reader. We shall close this note with a few extracts from somewhat better authorities than Dr King, to show that the poor doctor must have been smiling when he was writ ing the following very comical fiction:

"I might add (writes the doctor,) as a fifth means of destroying the protestant religion, and slackening discipline, the uni versal corruption of manners that was encouraged at court. I do not charge King James with this in his own person, nor will I insinuate that he designed it, though he took no care to re dress it; but it looked like a design in some, and whether de signed or no, it served the ends more than can easily be imagin. ed, and opened a wide door for it. That kingdom that is very corrupt in morals, and debauched, is in a very fair way to embrace that persuasion; and generally these proselytes were such as had renounced Christianity in their practice before they re nounced the principles thereof, as taught in the reformed churches; and many Roman catholics declared that they would rather have us profess no religion at all than the protestant. In short, whether it was from the looseness of the principles of their religion, or from a design to gain on protestants, impiety, profaneness and libertinism were highly encouraged and favoured; and it was observable, that very few came with King James into Ireland, that were remarkable for any strictness or severity of life; but rather, on the other hand, they were generally signal for their viciousness and looseness of morals. The perjuries in the courts, the robberies in the country, the lewd practices in the

nour, from whose mouth I had it, that if the Prince of Orange came over for the crown, he

stores, the oaths, blasphemies and curses in the streets and ar mies, the drinking of confusions and damnations in towns, were all of them generally acts of papists. This universal viciousness (continues the pious doctor) made discipline impossible, and whatever protestants were infected with it, were entirely lost to their religion and the church; for the stress of salvation, according to the principles of the reformed religion, depends on virtue and holiness of life, without which neither sorrow for sin nor devotion will do a man any justice; whereas, he that hears mass daily in the Roman church, kneels often before a crucifix, and believes firmly that the Roman church is the catholic, and that all out of her communion are damned, makes not the least doubt of his salvation, though he be guilty of habitual swearing, drunkenness, and many other vices; and the observation of this indulgence gained them most of their proselytes that went over to them, of the lewd women and corrupted gentry; and many amongst themselves had so great a sense of this advantage, that it made them very favourable to debauchery, and openly profess that they had a much better opinion of their lewdest persons that died in their own communion, than of the strictest and most de vout protestant; and they would often laugh at our scrupling a ein, and our constancy and prayers, since, as they would assure us with many oaths, we must only be damned the deeper for our diligence; and they could not endure to find us go about to punish vice in our own members; since, said they, it is to no purpose to trouble yourselves about vice or virtue, that are out of the church, and will all be damned."

These extracts from the pious and Christian labours of this liberal archbishop, will, it is hoped, satisfy the reader. He will ask himself, perhaps, is this the authority on which Mr Leland founds his defamatory account of the state of Ireland, during the reign of James II.? or has the Irish protestant been doomed to get from the hands of a protestant clergyman, almost of the present day, a second edition of that vile absurd scurrility which excites the disgust and indignation of every enlightened protestant who reads it? Dr Curry, whose memory should for ever be dear

prayed God might blast his designs!" This, no doubt, was a most pious ejaculation, and one

to Ireland, has done a good deal in the refutation of these infamous slanders, which the candidates for mitres have so industriously circulated. Dr Leslie, who replied to Archbishop King, and whose reply never was answered nor contradicted, gives a very different account of the practices and conduct of the protestant clergy; to which practices he attributes the rapid decay of that religion in Ireland. Dr Leslie, being a protestant clergyman himself, is no bad authority on such a subject; he thus writes: "I was myself a witness, that atheism, contempt of all religion, debauchery and violence, were more notorious and universal in the protestant army in Ireland, from 1688 to 1692, and more publicly owned, than since I have known the world. my knowledge several have turned papists, on account of the lewdness of the army and the apostacy of the clergy." Marshal Schomberg, in a letter to King William, thus writes his opinion on the same subject:- "I did not find (says the General) that the protestant clergy apply themselves enough to their duty,-while the Romish priests are passionate to exhort the people to die for the church of Rome, in putting themselves at their head."-This letter is dated December 1689.-Dalrymple's Memoirs, vol. III. p. 59.

Το

But Bishop Burnet is still more explicit in his reasons for the very corrupt state of the protestant church, during the pious ministry of Archbishop King; and the reader will find a good portrait of Archbishop King himself, drawn by the hand of his episcopal brother. "A disbelief (says Bishop Burnet, in his History of his own Times) of revealed religion, a profane mocking of the Christian faith and the mysteries of it, became scandalous and avowed; and it must be confessed, that the behaviour of many protestant clergymen during the time of James II. gave atheists no small advantage. They had taken the oaths to read the prayers for the present government; they observed the orders for public fasts and thanksgivings; and yet they showed in many places their aversion to our establishment too visibly. This made many conclude that the protestant clergy were a sort of men that would swear and pray even against their consciences rather than lose

which cannot fail to raise the person who uttered it very high in the estimation of a protestant reader. Yet this man, who thus swore, was one of

their benefices; and by consequence, that they were governed by interest and not by principle. Upon the whole matter, the nation was falling into a general corruption, both as to morals and principles; and that was so much spread among all sorts of people, that it gave us great apprehensions of heavy judgments from Heaven."

Here the reader sees a protestant depose against another protestant bishop; and Queen Mary, in a letter to her husband William, July 1690, thus gives her opinion:-" I must put you in mind of one thing, believing it is now the season, (the king was then in Ireland) which is, that you would take care of the protestant church in Ireland; every body agrees that at present it is the worst in Christendom." Yet such a revered pastor as Archbishop King, feels himself perfectly warranted to read lectures on morality and religion to the catholic clergy of Ireland. The reader will now be able to judge the quantum of Christian benevolence, and mildness and toleration, to which this ecclesiastical authority of Mr Leland may fairly lay claim. So much as we have here set down is only due to the acknowledged purity of character of which the catholic clergy may boast, during the sad and varied misfortunes of their country. The circumstances in which they have been ever placed since the Reformation, in a great manner induced that unbending integrity and truth which so eminently distinguished them. These were the great bonds which bound them to the people-which made the latter bow to their authority and obey their instructions. It was this Christian courage, which no disasters of their country could shake, that has made them so powerful and influential among their flocks, and which, since the Revolution, has made the best men in the whole circle of society the most formidable to governments of intolerance. It is qualities like those which suggested to the narrow and prejudiced the necessity of a controul to counterbalance their authority; such a controul as would lead to the gradual corruption of the priest, and the certain overthrow of his proper influence.